Nerdy Suburban Mom

I absolutely loathe housewifery. I am not good at it, I do not like it, I am bored by it, I am frustrated by it, I feel unfulfilled and unproductive while doing it… I could go on, but you get the idea. This was my day:

• be frustrated by trying to remotely access my work email;
• pick up Lillian to go to Library Story Time;
  • sit in on Story Time since Lillian is afraid of being left alone with the nice children, reader, and books;
  • check out a bunch of books that Lillian picked out
• dash home to meet Brett and get ready to go to the Farmers’ Market;
  • rake the lawn while Brett changes Reuven’s very wet diaper;
  • go to the Farmers’ Market;
  • buy peaches, cheese, eggs, ground turkey, and a basil plant;
• get home, start chatting on the phone to Allisson;
• start making egg salad for sandwiches for dinner;
  • realize we do not have mayonnaise, mustard, or bread, all critical ingredients for egg salad sandwiches;
    • start making “walnut and cream pasta” instead;
      • realize we do not have any milk except chocolate milk, which would make for a fairly nasty pasta sauce;
        • send Brett back to Farmers’ Market for milk and butter, while peeling hard-boiled eggs (for what is now tomorrow night’s dinner);
• run to the front door when Lillian answers it;
  • thank our neighbor who said her husband wanted the pine needles we had raked up so he would be over in the morning to take them off our lawn;
  • tell Lillian to please not answer the door without a grown-up around;
• cook pasta, smash walnut halves into walnut pieces, find parmesan in fridge, find bread crumbs in cabinet;
• ask Lillian to please not bother pouring extra salt on that;
• let Lillian run the onion chopper thing;
• still talking to Allisson on the phone;
• deal with Lillian tantrum when she realizes Daddy has gone to the store (well, Farmers’ Market) without giving her a hug and so tries to go out the front door after him and gets told to stay in the house;
• when Brett returns with milk and butter, figure out what to do with the lump of dough that milk plus butter plus breadcrumbs makes (seriously — the cookbook picture shows a creamy sauce, I have a squashy thing that looks like a soggy loaf of bread studded with walnuts, how is this supposed to coat pasta?);
• serve dinner;
  • eat dinner;
  • convince Lillian to continue eating dinner;
  • nurse Reuven;
  • convince Lillian to continue eating dinner;
• when Brett returns with mayonnaise and mustard, finish egg salad;
• collapse and blog.

Somewhere in there Lillian ended up in bed and Reuven ended up asleep. Now I know why Martha (a full-time stay-at-home mom I know) daily enjoyed a glass of wine or two after dinner. This lifestyle is enough to make anyone drink.

Oh yeah, and religious nutjobs who think my attitude is unfeminine and inappropriate according to what the Bible instructs: bite me.

I absolutely love the expressions in this.

A downside of telecommuting: when your company computer breaks, you’re SOL.

The laptop had been flaky before we moved; sometimes after rebooting it forgot it had ethernet connections, and you had to successfully make a dialup connection and then close it. Somehow, this let the computer know there was indeed a network card. It was a weird version of motherboard senility. After it realized there was a card, it worked beautifully and connected to my home WLAN with no troubles.

Then one day I made the mistake of shutting the laptop down overnight.

The next morning, it had forgotten there was a network card. I tried the dialup trick, but it still didn’t work. I checked ipconfig and…

C:>ipconfig
Windows IP Configuration
An internal error occurred: The system cannot find the file specified.
Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services for further help.
Additional information: Unknown media status code.

This is a sign that something very, very bad has happened. The ipconfig command is supposed to tell you what your IP address is, and various other interesting numbers that tell you what your network connection problem might be. Even in previous incarnations of the “duh where’s my ethernet” malfunction, the laptop knew it had a modem and gave information about that. If it can’t even do that much: bad.

I felt better when the IT department was as baffled as I was — it meant there wasn’t something incredibly obvious (akin to “your computer won’t turn on… is it plugged in?”) that I was missing. So now I am shipping it back to let them play around. According to the very unhelpful information available via Google, this sort of error usually indicates a very interesting hardware problem.

You know how sometimes your young child draws a picture and proudly shows it to you and you have no idea what it is? And of course that is when they ask you if you like it, and if you know what it is.

This is what Lillian brought home from preschool today:

And of course, she asked if I knew what it is.  Uh-oh, thought I.  Well, it’s kinda round and seems to have two big eyes.

I said, “Is it an owl?”

She gave me one of Those Looks. “Nooooooo.”

“Oh,” I replied. “Is it a cow?” Really grasping at straws at this point.

That got a full Eye Roll, Tortured Sigh, and Look treatment. “Mom, it’s a scribble.”

Righto.

Brett and I noticed one of our neighbors had a kitchen table set sitting out by the street. Hmm, we thought, this is nicer than the dinky tile-top table and cruddy chairs we have had for eons. We asked the neighbors if it was indeed up for grabs; they said they were moving, and wanted to get rid of some stuff, so it was either free to a good home or the garbage men would take it. (The reason for asking was mainly to meet them, since nobody just puts their furniture out on the sidewalk to give it some fresh air and a change of pace; unfortunately, since they were moving out, it was a pretty futile gesture.)

So, we’ve rescued a glass-top table and four chairs from death in a landfill. With a bit of repair (there was a bent fastener brace) and glass cleaner, it looks pretty decent. Lil likes it more than our dining room table, although I don’t know how long that might last.

Our old table and chairs, I plan on posting on Freecycle so they can also have a new home (they’re in fine condition, I just don’t like them). We don’t need to invest in brand-new something made of non-renewable materials, we’re reusing what somebody else no longer wants… yay us!

Yeah, I knew that the South would be hot. That doesn’t mean I’m disqualified from complaining about it.

Well… we’re here.

I am not one of those people that does well in heat. Well, that’s not strictly true; I sweat a lot, so I’d be well off if it was dry and breezy. I do not do well in humid environments with no wind.

So it was nice to find we had moved into a state with triple digit (in Farenheit) heat warnings expected for the next week. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeel nice.

Reuven was acting nice and calm after a bath.

Really, really calm.

In fact: totally zonked out.

Required background knowledge: The local bakery in Bedford makes the most amazing cookies. They are soft, buttery sugar cookies, coated in crisp red icing and decorated with a white pair of eyes and a smile. Delicious and cheerful, they are a favorite treat.

Lillian has always been a bit “difficult” when she’s low on sleep — either needing a nap, or being woken up early. This morning was one of those bad ones, since she stayed up talking to herself for a couple hours after being put in bed. The usual bribery, threats, and so on ensued, until she was dressed and in the car.

To tide her over until she got breakfast at school, we said she could have a smiley face cookie if she apologized for being incredibly rude and difficult while getting dressed. She was still tired and sad, but willingly apologized and got hugs and kisses. Then, I pulled the cookie out of the bag… and it had a frown instead of a smile!

This is something that the bakery does on every one in three dozen cookies or so, and usually Lillian finds it quite funny. However, when a toddler is feeling sad and expects to see a cheerful expression on her snack, handing her a grumpy treat instead does not go over well. She nearly burst into tears all over again, and Brett and I both felt terrible — it looked like we weren’t as happy with her as we really were.

To help make it up to her, we’re going to be stopping by the bakery after I pick her up from school and get a fresh batch…

On the left, Lillian Marie at approximately three months. On the right, Reuven James at exactly six weeks. The pillow is the same, no perspective games… he’s at least as big as she was.